‘It’s an essential story’: A Q&A with The Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson on the outlet’s growing climate coverage

When it comes to climate coverage, it’s all hands on deck at The Washington Post.

The 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is around the corner, and the Post is preparing a full-court press of coverage when the gathering kicks off in November. In addition to having a team on the ground, the Post plans to have multiple teams producing content across the publisher’s franchises and formats. The news organization’s aim is to make news coming from the meeting of world leaders to discuss climate change “as accessible as possible,” said Krissah Thompson, managing editor of diversity and inclusion at the Post.

Climate is becoming an increasingly important topic for newsrooms to take into account. The U.S. had 18 extreme weather disasters with losses of over $1 billion so far in 2021, according to a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

As news publishers will cover news coming from COP26, Digiday spoke with Thompson to discuss why the Post is investing so much people-power into this vertical and how the news outlet is doing it. While the Post’s core coverage is in areas like politics and government, business and tech and investigative reporting, the Post is “increasingly” seeing climate as an important area, Thompson said.

“It’s a key pillar of Washington Post coverage,” she said. “It’s an essential story.”

The conversation has been edited and condensed.

How is the Post investing in climate coverage?

Our climate team has doubled since 2018 to a dozen reporters and editors [A Post spokesperson later updated the figure to say that the team is made up of 13 employees — 10 reporters and three editors]. Maxine Joselow just launched the “Climate 202” newsletter covering climate policy. Reporter Tik Root was recently added to our Climate Solutions series, where we’ve been writing in the last year on some visionaries in the climate space, profiling them and their solution-oriented work. We’ve added graphics reporters, data reporters and designers, too, who work almost exclusively on climate.

The Capital Weather Gang is another four-person team covering this. They were initially an old-school weather coverage team that has become really dynamic in social spaces and jumping on weather news and trends and providing the science and meteorology behind that. With extreme weather and the changing climate, they have been essential in working with our climate team.

For broader environment coverage — like hurricanes in Florida or heat waves in Arizona — we call upon members of our America desk to cover the nation broadly and to partner with the climate team.

What are the Post’s plans for COP26 coverage?

We see this climate conference as a moment where we will be focused on this important topic, and it brings together the great work the team has been doing and highlights it. Between editors here and the team on the ground, we are approaching a dozen people to cover COP26.